A slice of Sicily: The lively fish market

ISOLA DELLE FEMMINE, Sicily (CN) — The sun rises majestically over Capo Gallo, a steep-sided headland west of Palermo, and turns the swelling Tyrrhenian Sea into a miraculous mirror of golden orange light.

In this picturesque seaside town at the outskirts of Sicily's capital, besides sleepy café staff, bakers and squads of street cleaners making their rounds, the only people working at this early hour are the town's fishermen — known as i piscaturi in the Sicilian dialect.

Well before the sun rises and delivers Sicily back into another blistering summer day, i piscaturi are busy launching boats into the sea and collecting catches from nets strung among the reefs offshore.

As the first bright orange sun rays creep over the sea, the piscaturi head back toward the harbor here with their boats squirming with a colorful assortment of edibles from this island's salty waters.

Before long, with the sun now established in the sky, they're setting out their day's catches at vendor's slabs and tables lined up under the roof of a dockside market. They lumber, joke, holler and banter as they work.

It's a feast for the eyes and a symphony for the ears as the fishermen cry out the names of their offerings:

There are scorfano (redfish in English, cipudda in Sicilian), seppia (cuttlefish or squid, siccia in Sicilian), polpo (octupus, purpu in Sicilian), cernia (grouper, also known in Sicilian as cijernia, gerna, or perchia di mare), anguilla (eel, ancidda in Sicilian), salpa (cow bream or dreamfish, also known in Sicilian as manciaracina).

“When the weather permits, we head out,” says Giuseppe Scarpa, the 60-year-old captain of a small fishing boat, the Maria Santissima delle Grazie, or Saint Mary of Graces in English.

People stand around a fisherman selling a fish at a market in Isola delle Femmine on July 11, 2023. (Cain Burdeau/Courthouse News Service)

His boat is named so because Saint Mary of Graces is a patron saint for Isola delle Femmine, and a large image of her stands watch over the boats in the little harbor.

“People come from Palermo, Sferracavallo, Carini, Capaci; people even from here come down to the market,” Scarpa says. “They know about our product: Not fresh, live!”

He bends over slightly and presses his forefinger into a still-squirming grouper on his slab: “It still moves.”

“There's a guarantee in this product: Let's call it 'fished at hour zero,'” he says, using a marine variation on the “kilometro zero” concept used in Italy to denote foods produced locally, or within the distance of a kilometer.

“Within an hour of pulling up our nets, the fish are on the selling block,” he says with pride.

It was around 9 in the morning, and the market was buzzing with customers.

There are some 66 fish markets where fish are sold and processed around Sicily's vast coastlines, according to Sicily's regional fishing administration. These markets are supplied by some 1,700 fishing boats, which employ around 5,500 fishermen, among them some 50 in Isola delle Femmine. The region is seeking to foster more buyer-friendly fish markets like the one at Isola delle Femmine.

Sicily has an ancient fishing history, and the bounties of the sea are a mainstay of Sicilian cooking and culture. Today, though fishing has declined in importance, the industry continues to provide work to about 70,000 people, officials said. That makes Sicily Italy's eighth-largest regional fishing industry. Italy's fisheries are valued at about 52.4 billion euros (about $58.8 billion).

Luca Sammartino, a regional vice president overseeing Sicily's fisheries, said in an email that the region aims to revive fish harvests that have been abandoned, encourage the development of aquaculture, and ensure Sicily's salty delicacies and fascinating maritime history are valued around the world.

The market at the Isola delle Femmine is a daily example of Sicily's marine riches.

“We sell everything we bring in,” Salvatore Nevoloso, a sun-tanned and wiry 75-year-old fisherman, says in between sales.

Salvatore Nevoloso, a 75-year-old fisherman from Isola delle Femmine, explains the varieties of fish in Sicily while selling his catch at his town's outdoor fish market on July 11, 2023. (Cain Burdeau/Courthouse News Service)

Nevoloso has spent his entire life on the water here — barefoot as a boy along the sea's edge and now fishing with his brother.

“We go out at 5 p.m. to set up our nets, and then at 4 a.m. we go back out to pick up our nets,” he explains. “This is all small fish. But we do enough sales to make do.”

The big money is in fishing for tuna, swordfish and dolphinfish. At his age, though, he says he can only do the dolphinfish season because reeling in tuna and swordfish is hard work.

“To get tuna, you need to spend the entire day on your feet; I am old now. You need to be a younger person.”

When he was younger, he ventured out for the biggest prizes. He says his largest swordfish weighed 250 kilograms (551 pounds) and his biggest tuna, a red tuna, came in at an astonishing 400 kilograms (881 pounds).

He's proud, too, of his island's fishing industry. “Sicilian fishermen are very good, very professional.”

For example, he says Sicilians invented techniques to lure sardines and other fish with lights.

The only gripe these fishermen seemed to have was with the European Union's imposition of restrictions, such as bans on certain nets and quotas for tuna.

“In some things, it's helped innovate, but in many ways, it has made mistakes,” Nevoloso says.

Giuseppe Scarpa, a 60-year-old fisherman from Isola delle Femmine, stands on July 11, 2023, in his town's fish market where he sells his catches. (Cain Burdeau/Courthouse News Service)

Scarpa was much more scathing.

EU rules are forcing fishermen who are struggling to make ends meet work for even less profit, he laments.

“When it comes to EU regulations, I don't agree with them at all, none of them,” he says shaking his head. “People in Brussels shouldn't be the ones deciding what we do here in Sicily.”

Pointing to quotas on tuna as an example of the disconnect, Scarpa says stocks of the fish are flourishing.

He then expresses dismay at a ban that went into effect some years ago on nets deemed to endanger dolphins.

Today Sicily's seas are chock-full of dolphins, and Scarpa says they are making trouble for the industry — getting caught in fishing nets as they try to eat the fish inside of them.

Dolphins themselves are not valued for eating, Scarpa continues, though a part of the mammal is a delicacy in Liguria.

“Dolphins are worse than sharks,” he claims, suggesting that dolphins can attack humans and one day will hurt children at the seaside. “Theirs numbers are too great to count.”

He turns to an old-timer sitting behind his stall on a piling holding up the market's roof.

“During the times of Mussolini," Scarpa says, referring to the form Italian dictator, "people were encouraged to shoot them with rifles and received 100 lire for every dolphin they caught, isn't that so?”

The old fisherman nodded.

“My father-in-law was a pro at shooting, and he caught a dolphin every day here,” the old man recalls. “So, every day he got 100 lire.”

The old man smiles and continues:

“We lived only by fishing,” he says. “Back then, there was no port, and when bad weather came in the boats were taken to Palermo, and the fishermen returned on foot without shoes.”

The big fishing boats are all gone now, Scarpa says. They sank years ago in a monster storm and slowly they disappeared from Isola delle Femmine; but the fishermen changed with the times and are content with their smaller boats bobbing in the harbor.

They're content with their sales, too. Without fail, eager customers — restaurant staff, fish lovers, pensioners, housewives, cooks — faithfully show up day after day.

When the market shuts down at lunch, there aren't any scraps left of the siccia, cipudda, purpu, ancidda that make Sicily what it is, a land of fishermen.

Salvatore Nevoloso, a 75-year-old fisherman from Isola delle Femmine, holds up one of his freshly caught fish he is selling on July 11, 2023, at his town's fish market. (Cain Burdeau/Courthouse News Service)

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau

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A slice of Sicily: The lively fish market

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